We Suddenly Know What Heaven We’re In

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Volume 4, Issue 2

In his song “Begin the Beguine”, Cole Porter describes that miraculous moment in time when you really experience being in a heavenly realm, even though you are still on Earth. It is one of the higher levels of the Flow state.

Lovers can sometimes shift into that place together, as if tuning across to a parallel universe of bliss just a dimensional twist away from this universe where we assume a defensive stance against endless trials and challenges whose humor we can no longer see. Rarely are the lovers intending that shift consciously, although Tantric Yogis populate much of this rare group.

Just as often it is one person alone making the shift. Again it occurs by itself without conscious intent sometimes, though great numbers of people on Earth engage in practices long ago discovered to have the effect of potentiating and bringing on that state and other levels of Flow. Yoga is the science of those practices, its purpose being the realization within inner experience of connection with divinity.

Yoga, from Sanskrit, means to yoke up, as an ox is yoked up to a wagon, or an attention node of the One Consciousness is consciously yoked up to the whole of which it is a part. The corresponding linguistic root in Latin is religare (verb), or religio (noun), meaning to bind, very similar semantically with the additional connotation of a debt or duty to repay righteously. All religions are forms of practice designed to accomplish this shift in inner state. These inner states actually exist, as has long been obvious to common sense, and as is now beginning to be validated by the skeptical reductionist science dominant in Earth thinking for the last four centuries.

The word “religion” today is not as useful in a conversation like this as it might have been. Organized religions have let people down on too many occasions due to corruption and wars and torture and molestation and God knows what else that is the obvious opposite of what religion must stand for if and when pure. The subtext of the word is therefore poisoned with that long history of going off course. The term I prefer to use as a result of that baggage is “Spiritual”.

I use the word “spiritual” in the context of the classical perspective that within what we can perceive of the whole of reality, there are two palpable aspects: matter and consciousness. We experience both and therefore common sense accepts that both exist. The remaining question is simply, “What is the relationship between these two aspects of reality?”

In that context, “experience”, “consciousness”, and “spirit” all mean the same thing to me. They are the names of the domain of reality that is not matter.

More about these thoughts — the levels of Flow state, the meaning of the spiritual levels of Flow, the practices of yoga and other spiritual methodologies, the meeting ground between the spiritual domain and science — in our next exciting installment.  🙂

My best to you all,

Bill

Watch for my new book, You Are the Universe: Imagine That, coming soon.

For those interested in my work in the media business world you might want to check out this video. Or this collection of videos.

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

Your Unconscious Is in Control

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That much Science and I can agree upon

Volume 4, Issue 1

I think now that I might have been borderline autistic.

The stage performances, and Ned and Sandy’s social behavior coaching, eventually got me to a place where I could hang out with people. Hanging out led to ultimately receiving data from my mirror neurons, thereby really sensing other people and their feelings. And being able to love people for what I sensed in them.

What I always found most interesting to study, however, was me. Watching myself carefully, I knew from very early on that I the observer was not in total control of this reckless robot. Psychology as a science is only now coming to that realization. If they had only looked inside they would have found out sooner. Instead they were looking outside for measurable phenomena in the subjective consensus reality, the scientific credibility of subjective introspective reality having washed out to sea after William James left us very early in the 20th century.

My room had a red rug, black couch, black furniture. On one wall was a construction I had made with a Fairbairn Fighting Knife hanging under a red plume feather pen. “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Door closed often, I would stand in contemplation for very long periods of time. I would take notes and sketch diagrams of consciousness, my own consciousness.

Later I would write down the distillation of decades of operating this observatory. I could have called it Mining the Unconscious. Mind Magic, as it is actually called, is a way of pivoting your mind that happens as you read the book and gain more transparency between conscious and unconscious.

My brainwaves apparently indicate abnormal amounts of delta waves going on while awake. I happened to be in a terrific mood the day of the measurement and laughed when the psychologist asked if I was extremely depressed. He opined that I must have access to my subconscious mind at all times to have sleep waves going on during wakefulness.

One thing I noticed was that there were many “voices” speaking to me (really thinking to me) in my head. I knew by this point what split personality disorder (schizophrenia) was and studied myself carefully, ruling out that conclusion. I did not seem crazy to me, and there were not two or a few well-defined personas with their own names and such. Instead it was a senate of many speakers, all in effect claiming to be the same person. Me.

This became useful when I learned that I the observer could listen to a speaker in my head acting as me, and objectively consider the message as if it were coming from someone who is not me.

Reporting my results to a strategic government think tank a couple of years ago I shared my working hypotheses:

  • A new neuronal net grows around undigested experiences that impinge on motivations.
  • This involves brain plasticity, i.e. new neuron formation;
  • As well as new patterns of connections among neurons.
  • In effect this is new software, not part of us at birth, therefore not the essence observer self that was born.
  • Each such “senator” or “senatorobot” is able to convince the observer self and moreover the body to follow its commands as if it were the total self speaking.
  • Each senatorobot is a subsentience, i.e. it has a degree of intelligence and a degree of self-reference as its own self.
  • Therefore each senator has a drive to continue to exist even when the observer self wants to discontinue it (for causing undesired behaviors).

Science has now validated certain parts of this theory. I just finished reading one of my Christmas presents from Lalita, Incognito, by noted neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman. Dr. Eagleman refers to senators as “automaticities” and describes the way the unconscious mind runs most of our behavior as “a team of rivals”, which sounds like a senate to me. The number of pages I’ve marked in his book suggests I’ll be writing a book about his book! 😀 

Drinking caffeinated (who knew?) carbonated beverages in great quantities I laid awake nights watching the debates among the senators and feeling how a speaker could ensnare me into fully taking ownership of what he said. I assumed that everybody was doing this.

I am very happy now to see a path to integrate my theories with the latest best-of-breed science, and hopefully add a dimension: how our experience changes when certain things are going on in the neuronal part of our self. That dimension gave me a control surface to work with to metaprogram my brain. Without introspection, neuroscience would have no way to hand the controls over to the patient, except Pavlovian button-pushing to change the chemical mix. David Eagleman’s work is a bold step away from the dominance of reductionism, leaving introspection as a valid part of the testrig. Thanks, David!

Best to all,

Bill

Watch for my new book, You Are the Universe: Imagine That, coming soon.

For those interested in my work in the media business world you might want to check out this video. Or this collection of videos.

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

Obvious Miracles in Our Lives

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Volume 3, Issue 52

Sometimes the miracles in our lives are more obvious than at other times. The world is always miraculous, it’s only us that sometimes see the miracle and other times repress it from our awareness.

Babies, kittens, flowers, stars, the Moon, the ocean, mountains, trees, falling in love together — these are among the more obvious miracles.

We often do not notice how improbable certain events are that occur within our detected experience bubble. We are not trained in statistics enough to realize how long the odds are of this happening and then it actually happening, and we just go along with it, taking it all for granted. The feeling is that if it is happening it can’t be miraculous, it must be all mundane.

By tuning down the appreciation for experiencing all that is life, we are radiating very little gratitude, and may even radiate to the universe as an ingrate. The universe responds by turning the dial on the lesson machine so that it bumps us a bit more roughly to make its points, since we seem to be missing the polite subtle hints.

Its intent, since it is guiding a blind man's bluff version of itself back to its full Self, is always beneficent. We the Universe are aggregately much too smart to kick ourselves in the groin just for fun.

A relatively new physics darling is the multiverse theory, a new name for what Heinlein called the “universe sheath”. Picture a very large or infinite number of universes all lying very closely side by side like a fat stack of clean paper in a drawer.

Maybe we tune from one to another. Perhaps they are laid out in a heaven-hell continuum and we can tune to the next more heavenly universe and actually make the crossover.

Is that what happened to Ina and me that day we visited Pfeiffer Beach back in the 70s?

Pfeiffer Beach courtesy of Craig Colvin Photography
"Pfeiffer Beach" courtesy of Craig Colvin Photography

My lady friend and I go back to our favorite beach, a well-known beach in California. It is totally different: there are Arabian brown and white striped tents, red flags at their tops fluttering in the breeze, in a row along the sand near the water and at the entrance path onto the beach there is now a mostly-completed wooden Church.

We walk up a few steps, smelling the new wood, and a man greets us at the door and lets us look in at the unfinished interior. We are not yet allowed to come in he says, though he doesn’t say why.

We walk the beach marveling at how amazing it looks. It’s as fine a day as a day can be. We are feeling fit as we walk and our hearts are light.

We come back another day and there is no church, no tents, just the familiar beach. Residents insist there never was anything built in that spot, and indeed there was no sign of anything disturbing the old tangle of sand and roots where we had walked up the steps together.

Needless to say this blew our minds, having both experienced the same thing with no help from our friends, so to speak.

Observer state is ideal for not taking the familiar for granted, for counting the cards and for noticing improbabilities.

Wishing you much personal experiencing of the miracle you are in, and much personal experiencing of the miracle you yourself are.

Best to all,

Bill

Watch for my new book, You Are the Universe: Imagine That, coming soon.

For those interested in my work in the media business world you might want to check out this video. Or this collection of videos.

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

Do What You Want, and Take It to the People

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Volume 3, Issue 51

Kids setting out in life are best advised to have a two-level plan: the longterm plan to do only what they want and get paid enough for it, and the immediate plan of having a job in a field that pertains to that longterm goal.

First of course they have to know what they want. Intention is a powerful thing, with effects across one’s entire lifespan. Setting out without a strong intention i.e. a concrete two-level plan, is like driving blind. The Universe will still get you there unless you make it impossible with some point you’re stuck on, but it will take longer and involve more pain.

If you do what makes you happy, you are more likely by an order of magnitude to get into Flow state. Your performance will be Flow state, which will cause your natural audience to be attracted to you.

During my life I got to meet a lot of musicians, performers, artists of all kinds. I liked that. My father Ned was probably the last orchestra leader/master of ceremonies whose band backed the biggest acts in the world in nightclub and hotel venues as the Big Band era transitioned into a memory. He established a school that taught performers. My mother Sandy was a painter and paint sculptor.

I met so many whose talents far exceeded their success. Some even knew how to jump into the game, meaning they followed the advice of the plan above — find a way that pays to get into the field you want to be in. They taught me that lesson. For example, Bill Heyer, a multitalented genius who made the leap into big industrial shows with Harold Beebe, bringing Broadway to the corporate stage — great plan and inestimable talents. He was on his way to stardom when he lost his way.

For a decade I saw him in Flow state a large part of the time, and he exuded love. Later on, when he had lost his way, he hurt my feelings by pointing out that he was not really my adopted older brother, it was just an inside joke Ned and Sandy had and we’ve been humoring them all our lives.

“You mean you were humoring me,” I said.

Sometime later the police asked me if I knew a man about 6 feet tall, moustache, well built, who would have my phone number in his wallet along with nothing else. Bill had apparently been doing a Norman Mailer on the parapets of the Gotham and fell to his death. I see him dancing off the ledge.

Before the Internet, lots of artists of all kinds, including showbiz, photographers, authors, creative of whatever stripe, had a good excuse when they caved to their inner cowardice and refused to market themselves, waiting for the mountain to come to Mohammed. Now we live in the ideal era for artists, when the Internet allows them to do whatever makes them happy, and simply requires having a decent available presence on the Web. They will in time attract their natural audience if they are projecting positive energy, which is the real joy of Flow state — you don’t have to fake love, just get a good night’s sleep.

Do what you want artistically, and by that I include whatever turns you on — writing code, inventing things, whatever. It’s all art if it makes you happy.

And remember the two-level plan when you advise young people in their teens and younger. This is in all of our best interests!

Remind them too about the second half of the title of this post — you yourself have to market yourself, you can’t depend on anyone else any more.

Ned would have changed one thing in the world if he could have. Talented people would always be found. They wouldn’t perish like a beautiful flower in a desert, and waste one’s spirit on the air — allusions he used in his writing, echoing the poet whose line he quoted in his memoirs:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And  waste its  sweetness  on the  desert air.

  — Gray’s Elegy in a Country Church-Yard

 You’ve got to do it for yourself. Nowadays the way to do that is available and affordable to everyone. It’s Facebook, Twitter, having a website, having a Youtube channel of your own. Whether you’re an inspired carpenter or calligrapher or therapist or tuner of instruments, whatever gives you joy and so gets you into Flow, open these windows so people can see you doing it.

That’s the advice I would give a kid. Or a performer. Or anyone that needs to hear it.

Best to all,

Bill

PS — P&G’s Olympiad series on Youtube will be remembered as the start of the age of Custom Content Takes Over Advertising. 

Watch for my new book, You Are the Universe. Imagine That, coming soon.

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.